Outside Her Contempt Hearing, Sylvia Poitier Says She Respects the Government

Former Deerfield Beach Commissioner Sylvia Poitier doesn't want anyone to think she "doesn't respect government." It's important that she pointed that out, because you might mistakenly come to some other conclusion when you heard about she polluted land with dry-cleaning chemicals, then wouldn't submit the government-required report about the pollution, then wouldn't pay the $200-a-day late fees for the report for more than a year, then would pay for the cleanup of the land, then wouldn't pay almost $11,000 in property taxes on the business.

You also might not think she respected government if you heard about the 225 gallons of paint she took from the city she was supposed to be running, or that she was almost sent to prison for falsifying city documents, or that the governor had to remove her from office after she helped send grant money to an agency that owed her brother money (and of which her daughter happened to be vice president), or that she helped her brother strike a deal in which he loaned that money to the agency at a lovely interest rate.

If you heard those things out of context, you might think Sylvia Poitier doesn't respect government. But no, she totally does.

She said so after a hearing on Friday in which she once again wriggled out of paying thousands of dollars in fines related to the state's Department of Environmental Protection in connection with the case of her dry-cleaning business dumping "perc" into the ground. She was found in 2009 to be totally responsible for the pollution, and was supposed to submit a report on the chemical contamination by May 2011; she simply didn't, and now says she doesn't have enough money to pay the fines, according to the Sun-Sentinel.

Instead, a deal struck on Friday forces her to pay $1,200 a month -- we'll see if she actually does -- to clean up the site, because, as the Sun-Sentinel put it, "the state agreed it's more important to have her clean the site than pay the fine."